MANHATTAN (CN) — Jessica Leeds puts the year as either 1979 or 1980. She had been traveling to New York for work when she got bumped up to first class. Testifying in federal court on Tuesday, she remembered being the only woman sitting in the section, and that she shook hands with her seat mate, Donald Trump, as he introduced himself.
The two chatted — about what Leeds no longer recalls — and then, once their in-flight meals were cleared away, Trump suddenly began to kiss and grope Leeds, she said, and tried to put his hand up her skirt.
“He was trying to kiss me, he was trying to pull me toward him, he was grabbing my breasts,” Leeds said. “It was like he had 40 zillion hands. It was a tussling match.”
Leeds spoke from the witness stand at the former president's ongoing civil rape case with another accuser, E. Jean Carroll, a writer who spent the previous several days describing an evening in 1996 that she says Trump raped her at the department store Bergdorf Goodman, after shoving her against the wall in a dressing room.
Carroll filed the lawsuit under a newly enacted New York law aimed at giving survivors of sexual abuse a second chance for justice by opening a one-year window to file complaints that would otherwise be barred by the statute of limitations. Based on Trump’s denial of the allegation, Carroll's lawsuit also seeks damages for defamation.
Leeds noted Tuesday that, on her flight with Trump over four decades ago, she was sitting exposed in the aisle seat of a commercial flight. Across the aisle, a man seemed to be watching as she struggled against Trump's advances.
“His eyes were like saucers,” Leeds said of the fellow passenger. “I remember thinking, ‘Where is the stewardess? Why doesn’t somebody come and help me?’ And then I realized nobody was going to help me. I had to do it myself, and that’s when I got the strength to get up and get out.”
The encounter lasted just seconds but “seemed like forever,” she said, before Leeds rose to her feet and found an empty seat in the coach section. Leeds, then 37 said she lingered behind once the plain landed to avoid running into Trump at the terminal. She didn’t report the assault: not to the airline, and not to her employer.
It was a different time, as Leeds, now 81, explained.
“Men basically could get away with a lot, and that’s sort of where I put it,” she testified.
Even if she had spoken up, she wouldn’t have expected anything to come of it.
“If I had gone in and complained about what happened, my feeling was that my boss would say to me, ‘Well, that’s really too bad. How about lunch?’ I didn’t think I’d get any sympathy,” Leeds said, then added, “I didn’t want any sympathy. I wanted this job.”
The cultural context Leeds provided echoed Carroll’s testimony. Both women described fighting against Trump but said they didn’t call for help in the moment and didn't go to the police in the aftermath.
"I am a member of the Silent Generation," Carroll told jurors this week. "Women like me were taught and trained to keep our chins up and to not complain."
For Carroll, the time to speak up came in 2017, when dozens of women came forward accusing Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct escalating to rape. For Leeds, it was the year before, while Trump was running for president.